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CBS’ job satisfaction survey was supposed to take place last autumn but was postponed due to the large department merger, which resulted in CBS going from 14 to 11 departments. Employee representatives explain that conducting a survey last year would not have been any use.

Anne M. Lykkegaard

Journalist

CBS will conduct its next job satisfaction survey this autumn. It was supposed to be conducted during the autumn of 2018, but due to the large department merger during spring and summer last year, members of the General Consulting Committee (HSU) decided to postpone it by a year.

“We talked a lot about whether we should postpone it or not. But at the end of the day, the results would have been of little use in the long term,” explains member of HSU and employee representative Tine Silfvander.

In the job satisfaction survey, staff members are asked questions such as how things are going between you and your boss, the work environment and overall satisfaction. The survey asks questions about the past. Therefore, Ole Helmersen, Senior Shop Steward at CBS, argues that it wouldn’t make much sense to ask employees in new departments about what they think about a boss they’ve only had for two months.

“If people comment on a situation that no longer exists, it would be useless. And it’s hard to ask people to do a job satisfaction survey about an environment or boss that they’ve only known for about two months, which would have been the case if we conducted the survey in November last year,” he says.

In the last job satisfaction survey, the academic staff gave senior management a low score (2.6/5) in regard to their confidence in how CBS is being run. Afterwards, the Academic Council established a committee to investigate the reason for the low score.

The survey from the committee showed four main issues in particular: non-inclusive decision making; increasing bureaucratization; not being able to speak up about the way things are done at CBS; and a lack of confidence in the management of CBS.

So by postponing the survey, are senior management just trying to avoid another load of poor survey results?

“It had nothing to do with that. I know some people might say that was the case, but it’s nonsense. We postponed the survey so that employees affected by the merger would have had time to settle in and make a better judgment of their new department structure,” says Ole Helmersen and continues:

“It wasn’t even the senior management’s idea. The proposal was made at a meeting with the HSU, who agreed that it wouldn’t make sense to run it.”

Tine Silfvander explains that conducting a job satisfaction survey uses up a lot of energy and resources, so in the end, it made more reason to wait.

“It makes way more sense to do the survey when people have settled down in their new habitat – as it is their new habitat they have to assess. Not what they just came from. Things have to make sense, otherwise it’s just a waste,” she says.